Traveling Characters

Getting characters from place to place in your story is a tricky thing. Like dialog, description must move the plot, or it risks dragging your readers along in the dust. So, as a writer, you must constantly ask yourself, is describing this trek from point A to point B worth it to my reader? Does something happen along the way to create tension, add to the conflict, or show a character’s evolving nature? If not, then just say it happened. “After four day’s travel, the group arrived” and so on. There is nothing worse than dawn to dusk story telling. Very young writers will do this. It’s called bed-to-bed writing and starts with getting up in the morning, documenting every detail of the day, and ending when they turn in at night. Readers don’t need to know every detail. They are smart enough to assume certain things happen. What they want to know is how is this story moving along? They want to know the key events that will add up to be important in the end. If, in your first draft, you’re not sure yourself – which sometimes happens – remember, it is a draft. You can always go back and eliminate things and add things.

Small Bites

Amy Ludwig VanDerwater
 

April is poetry month, and I've decided to dedicate Monday and Friday posts during April to the smaller bites of writing that I’ve been thinking a lot about lately.

My students wrote some found poetry a few weeks back, and it’s been on my mind ever since. Many teens think poetry has to be about love and all their internal problems. This type of poetry is usually filled with angst and may be theraputic, but rarely has any staying power. It’s too personal.

Talented poets can create a story in a very small space. They chose their words and the way the words play together very carefully.

I had the opportunity a few months ago to meet Amy LudwigVanDerwater, a poet and children’s author, who has a wonderful site called ThePoem Farm. She posts her poetry there. Every so often, she said she harvests poetry from the site based around a theme. She’ll bundle them up and propose an idea to her publisher. She now has two books in print, Forest Has a Song and Every Day Birds, the second recently published. When I talked with her she had the artists proofs for the book with her. They are beautiful collages made of textured papers.

Poetry is not an easy sell, but Amy has found a great outlet.

 

Talkin' Writin'

I love talking with young writers about the craft.

My daughter had some friends over yesterday, and I got to have a short conversation with one girl who has a draft of a book she wants to publish. We chatted about agents versus independent publishing.

Before the holidays, one of my students stopped by after school looking for advice about how she was drafting her story. I took a look at her notebooks, and she’s doing everything right – outlining the story, writing bios for the characters.

This is what it is all about.

Spreading the love of literature, whether it be through reading it or writing it.

As 2015 wanes, think about how you are going to start spending 2016. Find a way to chisel out some time to spend in a creative – or created – world.